


A Test of Potential

by elgeonmb



Category: Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (RPG)
Genre: Gen, Jotun, Tempering, Trauma, Warmains, i know y'all like jotun, mostly it's just a boy being sad, plus or minus that weird metanarrative amnesia thing Fable does, well good news they're only mentioned herein
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22238167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elgeonmb/pseuds/elgeonmb
Summary: A boy walks out into the Fields and meets his fate.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	A Test of Potential

This story isn't true. It didn't happen this way. I wish I could tell you how it really went down, only, I think the way things "really" went down this story didn't happen at all anymore. Whatever. Call it a parable or an allegory or a fable or something. I just want to tell it so it's not just rattling around in my head. I want to say goodbye to who I was when this story happened and have him stay that way, pressed between these pages. It would be nice if people believed me, too, but I sort of shot that with the opening line and all.

So, let's say this: I was a boy. I had an ordinary name, like Jeff or Ivan or Chuubo. Let's say, and this is probably a lie, let's say I didn't have many friends except a Jotun girl called Salkova. Let's say I didn't have much in the way of family either, because I don't want to think about what it would mean if I did have family. Let's say I'd stayed late with my friend and her parents, playing bridge, which is a game I like, and I was cutting across the Fields to make it back to my dorm before I got locked out. That's the sort of thing I have to deal with now, so I'm guessing I dealt with it then, too.

There was a full moon that night. This is provable historical fact, in as much as that carries any weight at this point. It was a full moon night and bad things are supposed to happen during full moon nights, only I was mostly just glad I could see more than two inches in front of my face and wasn't at risk of walking into a sinkhole or a tree or whatever. I think this is the sort of thing I used to do a lot, stay out late and cut through the Fields, so those stories of taken children and such didn't much bother me-- I mean, I'd met the those friendly Riders, the Silver Horde, by then and knew that like half those "taken children" were just runaways, and while I don't understand what's so appealing about living in a tent and killing stuff to eat I can sort of get why a runaway'd go to the Horde instead of School the way I did.

The man that rode up to me wasn't with the Horde. I'd say it's because he wore Excrucian war-dress but I think it went deeper than that. I think if you'd seen him in a bathrobe you'd know he was a Warmain. He was so _much_. He was tall and old and had one of those Fu Manchu moustaches that I hope I don't grow when I'm older. He looked at me, and he blew this white ivory horn, and the sound of it shook my bones around in me. It faded to the galloping of hooves, the sound of the Great Hunt, and at that point I was pretty much sure I was going to die.

Like, that's just how it goes, you know? Sometimes you get hit by a bus, sometimes you get cancer, and sometimes Death's armies from the Outside ride in to put you on a meat hook or whatever it is they do. I mean, I know what they do now, but at the time I didn't. Meat hooking seems a reasonable guess for what I would have thought they did before learning that it was actually much worse than that. 

The old man grabbed me by the shirt, or maybe the tie. I think I was the sort of person who wore a tie to their friend's house, even if you'd known them since you were both kids who, like, ate dirt or whatever kids do. He grabbed me by the tie and he pulled me up off the ground with it, put me level with him so my legs were just dangling by his horse's side. He was old but he was strong and in his other hand gleamed this wicked sword. At that point I was hoping I'd be reincarnated as someone with more friends, which, now that I'm saying this, seems pretty pathetic.

I keep changing the subject, which is how you know I don't want to talk about this. But, I have to, I guess, so I'll say what happened next. He pulled me up by the tie and cut my face with his awful sword and spit at me, with that rotten black spit people who learn Night-Craft get. He held me up while I squirmed and he looked at me, and eventually I stopped squirming, and I looked in his eyes of night and falling stars, and I saw...

I'm going to talk about my best friend Page for a bit, instead of what I saw. There was a bundle of sticks and clay and mud on the back of the Warmain's horse. I remember this, I think, or, at least Page now assures me that this happened. There was a bundle of sticks and such on the back of his horse and pretty soon I was going to turn those into my best friend Page. I saw those when I was squirming around and it seems to me, even then, even as some idiot kid who didn't know what Night-Craft was, that I'd know there was something missing from them. Page tells me that the missing thing is their brain, but I'm wondering if it's not some deeper flaw, something of that sick need the Warmain has, that Warmains always have, written into sticks and mud. I kind of like that idea because it implies that I did more to make Page than just kind of spit on them, but I guess I'll get to that later. 

Let's say this is what I saw in the Warmain's eyes. I saw myself, as I could be. I saw this stretched out old man with a Fu Manchu moustache and eyes of night and falling stars, only, with my red hair and my face, I guess. I was riding a horse up to the sky. I was drawing back a bow. This is allegory, you know, or, possibly I am lying to you to make you think better of me. Let's say I saw myself as Death, then, rather than what I really saw. 

Let's say in that awful future that I kill the sun, that I strangle the Headmaster of the Bleak Academy with my bowstring, that I make of myself a tyrant-king in the cold darkness of Town without a sun, like Mayor Celdinar only less funny and with a worse hat. Let's say I took that ivory-white horn to my lips and blew, and in blowing I called the whole of the Excrucian host here, and they slaughtered their way through Town, mounted the Principal's head on a pike, chased away the Silver Horde, ran through the Jotun and the youkai and the others, brought out night and falling stars in every human eye, and made of Town a Near and a Sunless Land. 

Let's say that was what tempted me. Let's say being king of half the world was what grabbed me by the heart and made me want to beg this old man to teach me how to be what I saw in his eyes. Let's say that sick slaughter was something I wanted. It wasn't. Like I said, this isn't actually what I saw, but that's between me and him. I feel like I have to keep hedging my bets, you know, telling you I'm not so bad as this, that I might be a bit of a prick but I certainly don't want to kill the sun and supercede Death, that it's just a story. But I think you should know that it was sort of like that, what I saw. It was sort of like wanting to be the person who killed everyone and took over the world. 

It was the Jotun-killing thing that actually stopped me, I think. My friend and her family-- I think I wanted a potential future where, you know, I didn't kill them with a spear. So, I started looking through futures that swam in the old Warmain's eyes. I started trying to find one where everything stayed the same as it was. And, I didn't. It didn't exist. Salkova and I are never going to be friends again, says the old Warmain's eyes. 

That's the part where people are supposed to be crushed, I think. I think the point of this whole exercise is to horrify you with the inevitability of suffering, to hollow out your head and replace your dreams of being a good person with dreams of conquest, or of keeping everything the same. I think the general failure state of this, his Test, is that you wind up begging for a future that doesn't exist, and then he kills you, or I suppose that those dreams of conquest take you and he makes you part of his host. 

That didn't happen to me, which is how I can tell you this story. I don't know what made me survive it without breaking. I think I might just be too... ordinary, to take things like this very seriously. It affected me, obviously, I'm not that hollow. I just didn't, in the end, believe him. I told him that, incidentally. I told him that I was going to stay friends with Salkova forever, goddamnit, no matter what his eyes say about us. And then I spit in his face, which, I guess I probably expected was going to make him kill me. I didn't know a lot about Warmains then. 

He smiled at me like he loved me, then. He smiled at me like I was his beloved grandson come to visit, like he was going to put away his sword and have his host bring me fresh-baked cookies or whatever it is that grandparents do. I thought then that I had cheated him, or, impressed him somehow, or possibly that this was all a nightmare I was about to wake up from. I thought that up until the point where he stabbed me in the gut. He stabbed me and...

He wrenched. I twisted. He tore. I broke.

I can't tell this part of the story. I can't say in words what he did to me.

The night and the falling stars trickled into my eyes, then. I found the ivory horn, then. Salkova stopped talking to me, then. The Hunt began to call me "Master Warmain", then. I spat black rotten spittle out at that bundle of sticks, and they woke, and said their name was Page.

I actually remember this part, which means we're at the end of the story, but I do want to say why Page is different. They called me "Master Warmain", when they woke up, and I was so sick of being called that that I snapped, I shouted that that wasn't me, that I wasn't him, that I was just some kid, and I never asked for any of this. I'd done this a few times before, at the Hunt, and they'd always just give me this look, the sort of look you'd give an old person who couldn't quite remember what year it was. 

Page just looked at me and smiled and they said to me, "Oh, cool. What are you, then?"

I didn't actually know what to say, because, again, I was expecting that weird look instead of an actual response in words. But, I guess, I composed myself, and I said to them, "I'm Sarrin," which is my name now, I guess.

I don't know what it means to be Sarrin. I don't know what it means to be me. I don't want to be anything like him but I don't know what else to be. I feel like I should have a resolution, you know, at the end of this story. I should put away that kid I used to be, like I said I was going to. I should ride off and do something stupid, rail against Death or God or whatever. Or maybe I'd pull off the mask and say, "Just kidding! I only told you this to make you sad! I'm actually fine and Salkova and I are still friends and I actually love having a bunch of Riders following me around and misnaming me and threatening people I know!"

If only.


End file.
